Leaving Berlin (35 page)

“How’s your voice?” Alex said to Erich. “Still hoarse?”

“Not so much. I’ve been thinking what to say. What will he ask, do you think?”

“He won’t. I will.”

“You?” Irene said.

“Well, not on the air. I can’t use my voice. They’d pick it up right away. I’ve written some questions out. You just answer, then say whatever you want.”

“But we’re not on the radio?”

“You will be. Make a tape recording, they can play it anytime. Don’t worry, you’ll sound as if you’re there in the studio.”

They were crossing the Spree now, into Spittelmarkt, and turning up to the center.

“We’re going to the house?” Erich said, suddenly excited, head up.

“It’s not there anymore, Erich,” Irene said gently, to a child. “It was bombed.”

“But it’s just up here. Let me see. I want to see it.”

“There isn’t time,” Alex said.

“But it would be the last time. I can’t come back.”

Irene turned to Alex. “We have one minute? We can spare that? If he wants to see.”

“Stay in the car. One minute.”

He turned into Kleine Jägerstrasse, stopping the car by the mound of rubble where he’d had his morning cigarette. The street was deserted. In the moonlight you could see the jagged outline of the remaining walls, still, lifeless.

“Oh,” Erich said. “Look. Only the door.”

“I told you. It’s gone,” Irene said.

“So many years. And then gone. I thought it would always be like that, the way we lived here.”

“So sentimental,” Irene said. “It was an ugly house.”

“Not to me. Not to Mama. She loved it. And to be like this—who was it, the British or the Amis?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter? By that time it wasn’t ours anyway. Papa sold it. To the Nazis. Well, who else was here to buy it? So it’s not von Bernuth for a long time. You miss it? What do you miss?
Your own childhood, that’s all. The house—” She waved, letting the house slip away.

“Still,” Erich said.

“It wasn’t the same after Mama died,” Irene said, partly to herself now. “He let it go. Like everything else. I think he never liked it here anyway. He liked the farm. Where he could bully his Poles.”

“He never bullied—”

“Ouf,”
Irene said. “More stories. Anyway, they have it now, the farm, so in the end—” She trailed off, then turned to Erich. “And we have our coats. So that’s something. Maybe this time we won’t be so careless.”

“Who was careless?”

“Well, maybe not you, so young. Look at Papa, one card game and another piece of furniture’s gone. Look at me.” She stopped, gazing out the window at the house. “You know, when you put us in the book,” she said to Alex. “The girl wasn’t me.”

“No, I—”

“You thought it was, maybe, but it wasn’t. A story. Now I think you want to put me in another story. And I’m not her either.”

Alex stared at her. “What do you—?”

But she cut him off, turning to Erich again. “But you’ll be safe, that’s all that matters. So take a look and now it’s gone,
poof
. Bricks. That time, too. Gone.”

“Okay?” Alex said, putting the car in gear, anxious to start again.

“Never mind,” Irene said, a stage cheerfulness. “We’ll start over.” She nodded to Erich. “Maybe for once a von Bernuth who amounts to something.”

Erich smiled. “Do you remember what you used to say to me?”

“What I—?”

“Remember who you are. You used to say that. Remember who you are.”

“Well, in those days.”

“Always proud of that, who we were. So you don’t change.”

Irene said nothing and turned back to face the street.

“Look, the French Church. The dome’s gone,” Erich said, still having his last look at the city. Alex thought of the day he’d left for good, Berlin draped in swastikas, everything intact. “What happened to St. Hedwig’s? Is it all right?”

“No, bombed too,” Irene said. “Where are we going?” This to Alex, who was looking in the rearview mirror. Nobody.

“The Kulturbund.”

The club was quiet, the few people there already in the dining room. Up the stairs, past Goethe. Martin’s office was dark, but unlocked, the tape recorder still on the side table. A portable mike had been attached to it, a makeshift studio, ready to send the word to Dresden and points east. Alex looked through the supply cabinet for a spool of tape and started threading it.

“Are we supposed to be here? What if someone—?”

“He’s at the theater. Let’s just hope he doesn’t count these,” he said, tapping the spool. “Here, give me a voice check. Directly into the mike, don’t turn your head. Your normal voice. Irene, close the door. Ready?”

Erich nodded, looking at the paper Alex had given him.

“Just introduce yourself, who you are, and take it from there. Use the questions if you need them. To keep things going. It’s really what you want to say. What it was like for you there. Here we go,” he said, switching on the recorder.

For a second, Erich said nothing, watching the spools turn, the machine a fascination in itself. Alex pointed to the mike.

“My name is Erich von Bernuth.” Alex made a lowering motion with his hand. Erich nodded. “I’m from Berlin. All my life, until I joined the army in 1940. I was not a Nazi, but Germany was at war, so I thought it was the right thing to do. The army. My family had always been in the army.” Alex raised his hand, steering him back.
“Now I don’t know, what was the right thing. I saw terrible—But I was a soldier, so you do what a soldier does.” Now a circling motion with Alex’s hand, move on. “But I want to tell you about what happened after. What is happening to other German soldiers. So many years later. I was captured, taken prisoner, at Stalingrad. We were sent to a camp, I don’t know where, we were never told. Many died, of course, in the transport. The wounded.” He stopped, waiting for Alex to nod. “The conditions in the camp were very hard. So more died. Typhus, other diseases. The work. But this was war, you don’t expect— Maybe they thought we deserved this treatment, for everything they had lost in the war, their own men. Then the war ends. Those of us who had survived, we thought, now it’s over, they’ll send us home. Such conditions in wartime, it’s one thing, but now— Of course you know they didn’t. Your sons and husbands are still there. Slaves. Or they are back in Germany. Slaves here. I was one of these. I was sent to the Erzgebirge, to work in the uranium mines. Maybe some of you have heard of this. Have heard rumors. But now you hear the truth. I was a prisoner there and I escaped. This is what it was like, this is what I want to tell you.”

Alex was nodding, clear sailing now. Erich had found his voice, unaffected, sure of itself, the quiet authority of a survivor. It would be a good radio voice, personal, artless. The barracks. The radioactive slime. The sick, sent back to work. The despair of knowing you would never be released, would be worked to death. The voice picked up speed, a steady rumble through the little office, unprompted now. Everything he had come to say.

By the door, Irene was watching, her face clouded over, near tears. What was she seeing? The boy he’d been? The prisoner dodging rat bites? A man at a microphone, no longer young. Maybe some daydream of what might happen next. Remember who you are.

And then he stopped—not abruptly, not fading away, just finished, an affidavit ready for signing. Alex glanced at the tape—almost
near the end. Everything Ferber could want, questions spliced in, wrap-up added, the best kind of interview. More than airfare out. Propaganda that was true.

“That was perfect,” he said to Erich, putting the reel into an envelope and replacing it with a fresh one on the machine.

Erich nodded, coughing, his body suddenly folding in on itself, as if the talk had exhausted him.

“Now let’s get you out of here.”

“Cargo,” Erich said between coughs, a wry smile. “For the airlift.”

They took Friedrichstrasse, safety in numbers, but there were only a few cars and nobody trailing behind. They were almost at Leipziger Strasse before they saw the roadblock farther along. Alex pulled over to the side, watching.

“They stopping everybody?”

“I can’t tell,” Irene said. “Maybe a random check. They do that sometimes.”

“But why tonight? Let’s try somewhere else.”

He headed west and turned down Wilhelmstrasse, past Goering’s Air Ministry, standing alone in the rubble, unscathed, a Berlin irony.

“They’re here too,” Alex said, idling again by the curb.

“Someone just crossed. Walking. They didn’t stop him,” Irene said. “Only the cars. Look, not all. They just waved that one on.”

“We can’t take the chance. Here, you drive and I’ll walk him across.”

“A woman driving? If they’re after us, they’re looking for a couple, no? Not two men. Not you.”

Alex looked at her.

“And then he’s safe,” she said, nodding to Erich, slumped in his seat. She opened her purse. “Here, give me the tape.”

“What if—?”

“And what if they find it on you?”

She took the envelope, not waiting for an answer, and opened the door.

Alex moved the car into the street. Two cars in front, the first being held up, guards looking at papers. The second pulled up, a quick check with the flashlight, another wave. Their turn.

“Papers?” a guard said, bored, shining his flashlight into the back.

Alex handed him his ID card.

“What’s the matter with him?”

“Drunk. Let me see if I can find—” Beginning to fumble with Erich’s coat.

“Never mind.” He looked down at the ID card, making a show of reading it carefully, then handed it back. “Go.” He motioned with his hand.

Irene was coming up on the sidewalk, slowing a little, trying to see if everything was all right. Alex watched her as she passed, purse clutched under her arm.

“Fräulein, out alone? All dressed up,” the guard said, the voice of a soldier in a bar. “Where to?”

Irene shrugged. “Meeting a friend. At the station,” she said, cocking her head toward the Anhalter Bahnhof down the street.

“Be careful there. An American friend?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t met him yet.”

The guard grinned. “How about a Russian friend?”

“For free?” Irene said, playing, then turned, beginning to move off.

“Worth it,” he called to her back. She wriggled her hand, almost out of sight now.

The guard looked back, surprised to see Alex still there, and waved him through again. “Go, go. Next.”

They passed Irene, not slowing until they were two streets away, dark to the checkpoint, then waited with the motor running, the roofless shell of the Anhalter off to their right.

“As good as Weigel,” Alex said when she got in.

“It’s what he thought,” she said, then looked out the window as they started again. “What they think we all are.”

They were heading straight for Hallesches Tor, no traffic, making up time.

“So, nothing,” Irene said. “Nobody’s following.”

“See how Erich’s doing. He’s been half asleep. You need to get him to the hospital when you get there.”

“An Ami hospital.”

“That was the deal.”

“The deal. Who made this deal?”

Alex looked at her. “Ferber.”

“Oh, Ferber. At the play.” She looked at her watch. “Swiss Cheese must be gone by now. Only Kattrin left. Do you think anyone sees we’re gone?” Then, thinking, “And what happens, when they ask you? About me?”

“I took you home. After that—”

“Yes, after that. Then they watch you.”

She said nothing for a minute, looking out as they crossed the canal and headed up the Mehringdamm.

“You say you’re coming after, but you can’t, can you?”

“We’ll see.”

“It’s like going to America. You can’t do it. You’re a traitor there.”

“Not that bad,” he said, trying to be light. “Uncooperative witness, that’s all.” He paused. “Times change. It won’t always be like this.”

She looked up toward Viktoriapark. “But you had to leave. That’s why she divorced you?”

“Lots of reasons.”

“You didn’t love her.”

“Do you really want to talk about this? Now?”

“When else? I’m almost gone,” she said. “Listen.” Outside, the roar of planes, coming in low a few streets ahead.

“You didn’t love her. Not like me.”

He turned to her. “What’s this about?”

“Nothing, I guess,” she said, looking down. “I just wanted to hear it. Something pleasant to think about in my new life.” She raised her head, facing the windshield. “And what will that be, I wonder. No Sashas anymore. All—what? Joes.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that.”

She looked away. “But it will.”

A kind of grunt from the back, Erich awake again. “They’re so low. We must be close.”

“We’re here.”

He pulled into the broad circular road that fronted Tempelhof, then the inner driveway that led to the building itself. Where taxis used to pull up, dropping passengers, now busy with jeeps and staff cars, the trucks out back on the runways, loading, leaving in fleets on the service roads. He had expected the airport to be bristling with guards, but there weren’t any at the doors—maybe all out on the field, where the goods were. The main building, with its square marble columns, was oddly empty, a passenger terminal without passengers, its soaring space echoing with the sounds of planes landing.

They hurried across the waiting hall to the departure gates. Through the windows he could see the floodlights on the field, shining on the runways. Planes pulled up in rows at the gates, assembly-line style, workers swarming over them like ants even before they stopped. German civilians, throwing sacks of coal down chutes from the planes, then lifting them onto trucks. A mobile canteen was making the rounds of the landing area, offering coffee and doughnuts
to the pilots, quick snacks for the return trip. Mother Courage in a truck, Alex thought, selling her capon. Had anyone looked for them at intermission? Wind from the propellers was blowing dust across the field. Everybody busy. He had to ask two cargo workers before he was directed to a soldier with a clipboard.

“You the dispatcher?”

“The what?” Cupping his ear.

“With the manifests. What’s going out.”